Page 31 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

1.2. Economic reset

1.2.1. The economics of COVID-19

Our contemporary economy differs radically from that of
previous centuries. Compared to the past, it is infinitely more
interconnected, intricate and complex. It is characterized by a

world population that has grown exponentially, by airplanes that
connect any point anywhere to another somewhere else in just a
few hours, resulting in more than a billion of us crossing a border

each year, by humans encroaching on nature and the habitats of
wildlife, by ubiquitous, sprawling megacities that are home to
millions of people living cheek by jowl (often without adequate
sanitation and medical care). Measured against the landscape of

just a few decades ago, let alone centuries ago, today’s economy
is simply unrecognizable. Notwithstanding, some of the economic
lessons to be gleaned from historical pandemics are still valid
today to help grasp what lies ahead. The global economic

catastrophe that we are now confronting is the deepest recorded
since 1945; in terms of its sheer speed, it is unparalleled in history.
Although it does not rival the calamities and the absolute
economic desperation that societies endured in the past, there are

some telling characteristics that are hauntingly similar. When in
1665, over the space of 18 months, the last bubonic plague had
eradicated a quarter of London’s population, Daniel Defoe wrote
in A Journal of the Plague Year [15] (published in 1722): “All trades

being stopped, employment ceased: the labour, and by that the
bread, of the poor were cut off; and at first indeed the cries of the
poor were most lamentable to hear … thousands of them having
stayed in London till nothing but desperation sent them away,

death overtook them on the road, and they served for no better
than the messengers of death.” Defoe’s book is full of anecdotes
that resonate with today’s situation, telling us how the rich were

escaping to the country, “taking death with them”, and observing
how the poor were much more exposed to the outbreak, or
describing how “quacks and mountebanks” sold false cures. [16]

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